This month we begin reprinting a series that first appeared in
GEM in the March-April 1969 issue. Over the coming months, we will
retrace engine history as presented in a series of early GEMs.
Man’s imagination led to the often quoted saying,
‘Necessity is the Mother of Invention.’ In early days when
men watched the unexplained phenomena of nature that dealt with
forces of power, their imagination undoubtedly led to experiments
applying energy to useful purposes. Historical re-. cords of such
events has given us the story of the lives of many great pioneer
inventors.
It would be difficult for an engineer of today to solve problems
if he had only the limited knowledge of the wheel, the lever, a
vacuum, electricity and many other basic laws of physics and
mechanics, as it was for the inventors of the fifteenth century to
find solutions to visions they contemplated.
So it was in the time of the great artist, Leonardo da Vinci,
using his talent and imagination to draw sketches of a cylinder and
the possibility of power being produced by a piston driven by some
sort of propellent. Leonardo lived from 1452-1519, and aside from
his great masterpieces in painting and sculpting, he conceived
ideas of many designs of machines using gears, link roller chains,
ratchets and pulleys. His drawings satisfied his imagination and he
did not put these practical designs into use.
During the next century there is little recorded of further
achievements with engines, until 1629 when Giovanni Branca made a
shovel wheel propelled by a blast of steam. Through a set of gears,
he was able to run a stamp mill, a pump and a spit to turn
meat.
Otto Von Guerricke 1602-1686, made experiments of a vacuum
through which the idea of the piston and valves were conceived.
Then, during this same period a Dutchman by the name of Christian
Huygens propelled a piston using gun powder to actuate the driving
force. The idea came from the principle of a cannon, however his
endeavor to connect this force to a machine did not work.
About 1700 Dionysius Papin (French) used steam in a cylinder to
force a piston forward and a vacuum to effect the return stroke. He
was unable to construct a machine to make use of these forces.
However, his efforts were another step toward practical designs. It
was not until 1712 in England, during the early coal mining era,
when mine pumps were being operated by horses (and the unit of work
began to be known as horsepower) did Thomas Newcomer experiment
with steam by improving on Papisu and Thomas Savery’s ideas,
produce an operative steam engine to replace for power on the mine
pumps.
He came upon the arrangement of making steam in a boiler, then
connecting it to the cylinder. The actual work of the engine was
still performed by the vacuum created by condensing steam. The
vacuum and water cocks were operated by hand. By 1767, the
collieries of Newcastle, England had 1200 horsepower of this type
engine pumping water.
James Watt (1736-1819), a mathematical instrument maker of
Glasgow and Dr. John Robinson had their steam engine which
propelled a vehicle. Thus was the first steam engine to operate
under pressure on the piston. The other earlier designs depended on
an open end cylinder and a vacuum to cause the piston to complete a
stroke. Watt’s engine was the first mechanical engine to turn a
flywheel.
One may wonder why we have gone into the development of the
steam engine, when we are concerned with the internal combustion
type of prime mover. It was not until the middle 1800s when such
men as Ferdinand Redtenbacker, Gustow Zeuner, Robert Mayers and
Clausins worked on the basic laws of heat energy and
thermodynamics. After their discovery of the possibility of burning
a fuel directly in the confined area of a cylinder and using the
resulting energy to move a piston, was their applications made to
the already developed mechanical engines that had been driven by
steam pressure.
So, it was the discoveries of the application of heat to turn a
wheel that gave the early inventors the idea of using an enclosed
cylinder with a piston operating as a crude source of mechanical
power. They also gained knowledge of many other features and later
used the idea of the open horizontal frame, slide valves and side
shaft that operated cams/for opening poppet valves, as well as
igniters.
